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16—47372-3 



-THE- 



"AMERICAN" SERMON 



PREACHED IN 



S. Paul's Cathedral, London, 



Sunday, July 4th, A. D. 1897, 



WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, 

BISHOP OF IOWA. 



V 






Privately Pri.ntsi) AUG 23 19 

1897 



-THE- 



AMERICAN" SERMON 



PREACHED IN 



S. Paul's Cathedral, London, 



— ON — 



Sunda3% July 4th, A. D. 1897, 



-BY- 



WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, 

BISHOP OF IOWA. 



Privately Printed 
1897 



IN LOVING MEMORY 

OF 

S. A. W. P. 

ENTERED INTO REST OCTOBER 27, 

A. D. 1897. 



^ 






This sermon was preached by request of the Dean and 
Chapter of S. Paul's, and is printed at the request of num- 
bers who heard it. 



THE "AMERICAN" SERMON 

PREACHED IN S. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, ON SUNDAY, JULY 
4TH, A. D. 1897, BY WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, BISHOP OF IOWA. 



I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy doings; I muse on 
the work of thy hands.— PsaJw CXLIII ; j : j. 



It is a day, a year, an epoch of glad remembrance, — 
of grateful praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God. 
On this day, so dear to every American heart, there was 
born, — nearly a century and a quarter ago, — a free and 
independent nation, and in the birth-throes, which tore 
from the mother-land her oldest, proudest, most far- 
reaching and important dependency, there was brought 
into the family of the peoples of the world the "Greater 
Britain " across the sea. Surely, never can this daughter- 
land, in her well-won glory and in her ever-growing great- 
ness, forget the circumstances of her birth. Is not our 
ancestry Anglo-Saxon — English ? Is not our very being 
instinct with British life ? Does not this territorially 
"Greater Britain " claim a share in all the past, be it 
good or ill, of the English-speaking race ? . Are not the 
glories, the rights, the privileges won by the mother- 
land, the very victories and defeats by which the English 
people have been made, each and all, a part of the noble 
heritage which is ours ? It is well and wise on this day 
of days, our nation's birthday, which, wherever we are, 
we fail not to celebrate with glad thanksgiving for the 
citizens of the great republic which, under God, wields 
the destinies and sways the fortunes of well-nigh half-a- 
hemisphere, to meet to remember the days of old and 
meditate on all God's wondrous doings and muse on the 
works of His hands in America's, as well as England's, 
metropolitan Cathedral, — ours till the war of independ- 
ence made the American people free from foreign rule 

5 



and the Church in the United States autonomous, — ours, 
too, from the fact that it is London's central shrine and 
that from this city and its historic liveries, its citizens 
and their well-filled coffers, from old S. Paul's, from S. 
Saviour's, Southwark, from S. Sepulchre's, and from S. 
Mary-le-Bow, — there came both the spiritual influences 
inspiring adventure in the new world, and the means 
warranting that lavish, material support which in the 
early Virginian settlement gave to the English-speaking 
race a trans- Atlantic Church and Commonwealth? In 
this great gift to us of our earliest settlements, in this 
sending forth of her best and bravest men to people the 
new world for England's Holy Church, there was no 
effort made without prayer to God, consecrating each 
enterprise. No expedition of the earliest colonists started 
from English shores without the adventurers receiving, 
ere they left home and native land and the altars of their 
faith, the Blessed Eucharist as their viaticum. These 
wise and self-sacrificing men — the founders and fathers 
of the American colonies — in their holy work exempli- 
fied the legend adopted by the philanthropic and Chris- 
tian promoters of England's latest colony on the Atlantic 
seaboard. '' Non sibi sed aliis,'' was the motto of the 
Georgia Trustees who sent to our shores that Christian 
gentleman, churchman, and chivalric soldier, General 
James Oglethorpe, as the ruler of the new colony in civil 
and military affairs, and with him gave to the Colonial 
Church, even in its feebleness and infancy, as missioners 
— the English priests— John and Charles Wesley, and 
George Whitefield, whose names and praise are in all the 
world. "Not for themselves, but for others" did these 
founders of the American settlements give their labors 
and their lives. It was in the highest spirit of self-sacri- 
fice that the statesmen, the soldiers, the priests, the yoe- 
men of the motherland laid broad and deep the founda- 
tions of our American liberty, our laws, our Christianity, 
and all that has contributed to our best estate. Ah! the 



birthday and the name-day of the republic, which was 
built on the corner-stone and massive sub-structure of En- 
glish lives, English Christianity and Churchmanship, may 
well be celebrated here. F"rom the very start our fathers 
were kept in mind that England's sons, who had crossed 
the sea, were not forgotten in the old home, but were 
remembered at the altars and in the halls of legislation 
of the land which they had left. They were taught that 
though exiles they were not aliens. They were ever re- 
minded that they were free-born Englishmen, parting 
with nothing of their birth-right, and losing nothing of 
their heritage of faith, fellowship and freedom by sailing 
to the western world. These lessons they never forgot. 
In the judgment of the students of the history of English 
liberty and constitutional law, it is fully, frankly, freely 
admitted that the American colonies in their claim, that 
resistance to tyrants was obedience to God, were right. 
It was after no little provocation ; it was only when ag- 
gravating repression had become too galling a burden to 
be borne ; it was only when the great orator and Church- 
man of Virginia, Patrick Henry, voiced the sentiments 
of the American commonwealths and communities from 
the south to the north, as he cried, in old S. John's 
Church, Richmond, Va. , "Give me liberty, or give me 
death;" it was only when that "peerless man," that 
"unblemished" English "gentleman " and Churchman, 
George Washington, drew his sword from the scabbard 
as the leader of freemen who dared to fight at fearful 
odds, battling for their rights as free-born Englishmen, 
that the strife was on. The blundering of an incompe- 
tent ministry, inaugurating a policy which found its 
most scathing rebukes on the floor of Parliament, where 
the friends of the colonies bore open and ample testimony 
that the Americans, in resisting the measures of the min- 
isterial party, were fighting the battle of English liberty, 
as established in Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights — 
compelled the struggle for American independence and 



made inevitable the separation of the colonies from the 
mother-land. The fathers and founders of the great re- 
public were loyal and loving supporters of the English 
constitution and the English liberty. They hazarded 
their lives and fortunes in this sacred cause ; with the 
courage of their convictions, they plunged into a most 
unequal contest, resisting even unto blood, simply and 
solely for the maintenance, inviolable, unimpaired, of the 
rights they recognized as theirs because spread forth and 
reiterated on every sheet of letters-patent, or in every 
royal or parliamentary grant and rescript of chartered 
and constitutional concessions and enactments. Had 
these our American fathers been less loyal, less liberty- 
loving Englishmen than their birth and training made 
them, they could never have been the founders of our free- 
dom and framers of our incomparable federal constitution. 
They taught a venal British ministry and a corrupt court 
how dear was liberty to the colonist, and how clear was 
the settler's conception that even the ocean could not 
separate him from the heritage of freedom which his 
fathers had left to him. Ah! it is indeed a privilege in 
this grand Cathedral, — the common sanctuary, the cen- 
tral shrine of the English-speaking peoples of the world 
— to recall to memory to-day the years of the right hand 
of the most high, to remember the days of old, to medi- 
tate on all of God's doings, to muse on the works of His 
hands. God willed our freedom, and willed it at the 
time it was won, for had the policy of the present age, 
with re.'-pect to the colonial dependencies of Great Brit- 
ain, obtained a century and a quarter ago it would have 
been hard indeed for our fathers to fault so mild a rule 
or throw off a yoke so easy to be borne. A race of 
brothers, separated alone by the waves of the sea, might 
in some federation of love, some equitable arrangement 
of mutual rights, have swayed the destinies of the world. 
Still, it was no mere chance, — blind fate had nothing 
whatever to do with so pregnant an event — which led 



Columbus, when in his passage over "the sea of dark- 
ness" in his quest for "Cathay and the land of Ind," he 
neared the unseen and unknown western shore, to change 
his course from due west to a southerly direction. But 
for this change, a few hours would have brought the little 
fleet that had left Palos in Spain on its way westward 
over the illimitable sea directly to the south Atlantic 
coast of the present territory of the United States, some- 
where about the Carolina shores. Had this discovery of 
the mainland been made by the Spanish admiral, the new 
world, so far as the northern continent at least was con- 
cerned, would have been, by right of first discovery, — 
as Pope Alexander VI., the Borgia-pontiff, so persistently 
sought to make it, — the possession of the Latin race, — 
a Spanish territory held as a fief of Rome. It was by 
this heaven-directed deflection of Columbus from the 
western course that the eyes of the Genoese adventurer 
never saw the North American Continent and his feet 
never trod its shores. It was thus, thanks to our Father's 
God, that we, the people of the United States, — we, the 
English-speaking peoples of the North American Conti- 
nent, can rightly make our boast that we owe nothing 
to Columbus, nothing to Spain, nothing to Rome ! Our 
discovery, our colonization, our Christianity, our liber- 
ties, our laws, our very life are not Latin, but are En- 
glish. We are sons of British sires and our people's free- 
dom, our faith, our features and our speech as well, are 
our heritage from Britain's historic past. 

It was on June the 24th, S. John Baptist's day, in the 
year of grace, 1497, four centuries ago this epochal year, 
that John Cabot and the " men of Bristol," sailing west- 
ward as the Bristol adventurers had done for years, ante- 
dating the sailings of Columbus, had the prima vista of 
the new world, then for the first time seen by European 
eyes of that dayand generation. It was under commission 
from England's King, Henry VII., to Cabot, empower- 
ing him to discover and acquire for the English people 



the unknown lands lying in the western horizon, that 
this eventful voyage was made. We may never forget 
that Cabot jailed westward, despite the papal bull of de- 
markation and exclusion which had, so far as the Church 
of Rome held sway, given into the hands of the Latin 
peoples of Spain and Portugal the destinies of the west- 
ern hemisphere. It was, in fact, 2i protest of the English 
crown, the English people, the national Church of En- 
gland, against the grasping policy of the Latin peoples 
and the arrogant claims of the papacy. It was this dis- 
covery of the North American mainland by Cabot and 
the Bristol mariners four hundred years ago this present 
midsummer which was made the basis of England's claim 
to a. portion of the North American Continent. That 
claim, enunciated with no uncertain sound by Richard 
Hakluyt ; — that claim which was made the ground-work 
of the charters and letters-patent granted by the Tudor 
Queen to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, 
the fathers of American colonization; — that claim which 
was so deeply grasped, so fully understood, so bravely 
maintained by prelate, peer, and peasant alike of the En- 
glish realm till the nation's war-cry for many a year was 
that ringing sentence, "No peace with Spain beyond 
the line;" — that fateful line of partition and exclusion 
drawn by the Borgia-pontiff in the interest of Spain and 
the Latin race alone; — that claim which, in its bold as- 
sertion by the Tudor Queen Elizabeth, called for the cre- 
ation of the British navy by the men who, through the 
favour of Almighty God, drove the Armada from the 
seas ; — that claim which England never surrendered, and 
after four centuries of struggle with the Latin race shares 
to-day with the great republic and the North American 
possessions, which are still the heritage of the English- 
speaking-peoples because discovered and taken posses- 
sion of by Cabot and the Bristol men in the year of grace, 
1497; — that claim has proved to be the source of our 
American national life, our American freedom. It was 



not without strife and sacrifice — the lavish expenditure 
of Hfe and treasure- — that England made good this claim. 
It was a "holy war" that won for the English race and 
the English Christianity the undisputed possession of the 
British North American possessions and the present ter- 
ritory of the United States. The strife, waged for nearly 
four hundred years dating from S John Baptist's day in 
the year of our Lord, 1497, ^'^^ the occupancy and su- 
premacy of the North American Continent, was between 
the Latin peoples, Spanish and French, together with 
the Church of Rome, and the English race, and the En- 
glish Church and Christianity. It was this discovery of 
the North American mainland by Cabot, — and we, the 
peoples of the United States and our brothers of the 
North American territories, can never forget this fact, 
so important it has proved throughout our history from 
the first ; — that was the source and spring of the English 
settlements on the Atlantic coast ; — barriers prepared by 
our sturdy sires against the encroachments of Spain — 
altars of the reformed, but still Catholic, faith raised 
against the altars of a corrupt catholicity. On that dis- 
covery by John Cabot and the Bristol adventurers de- 
pended the domination of the English-speaking peoples 
over the northern portion of the northern continent; — 
the prevalency of the English civilization and Christian- 
ity in the new world. It was the discovery of Cabot and 
the English claims founded thereon that gave the new 
world the English tongue and secured forever on the 
North American Continent the acceptance of the Anglo- 
Saxon ideas of life, liberty and law, the English faith, 
the English type of manhood and the English sense of 
right and justice and true greatness of soul. We of the 
new world, when we come to our fathers' shrines, when 
we visit our fathers' homes, our fathers' sepulchres, would 
not withhold our full, willing meed of loving praise as we 
recognize the sources of our freedom, our greatness, our 
glory in the struggles and vicissitudes which have been 

11 



,^_your ancestors and 
, .u. Vnclish people. ' ^ith you- 

tVe -'''-y t'e sh'-a.e a ----; 'f,., then,, and 
ours as well, "fathers. ^°".\_„ even when 
our fathers wer y- , EngUshme" ^^^^^ ^ 

to us, the r,ghts °' in *e.r/l«^ ^ou gave 

,Hey expatr.ated th m ^^^^^ „ across the ea- ^^^^^^._ 
.. ,,ee Church u; ^^^^ „y eolon.a day ^^^^^^ ,„ 

„s in every ^""^"^ .^Us which '"'"^'^^dependence. 
tion of the very pr n P ^^ ^^^ «,, '"1 d summer day 
arms in the bro V g ^ ^^,^, „„ a m d- .^ ^^^ 
You gave us -n 3^^] • ^,,, author-ty '"^^^.^^e repre- 
we may never "J^ ;^^,„, Va., the ^\^f^l^, „, Bur- 
"'' "'""' lifTeemen---theVirg>n- f°^ ^,„ , 
sentative body of .^ ^^, ""'' ^berty was laid -" 

g«''^"=:"(cI^"ation of A^^'tct/chmenshands. 
«asthatthe toun p,,g,„i,Chu ^^^^^^ ^ 

theHouseofGo an^ ^^ ^^^^ *"^,:: Vberty, and an 
Throughout our co ^^^^^.^^^ ,ter ^^ £„. 

,„,.,„g confidence n o ^^^^^^^ « ""^ f ,e,t An^ 
unstinted P"-= '^^^ j^ome °"' '^'\"l our very Frayer 

S"* "r"::;.. -ingcare,'' ^ *t, r^^>»"<i-'^='"'; 
when after th,s came at.me o ^^^ ^„ ef- 

Bookbearswrtnes , ^^^ and --""*" ea of the rigMs 

ing, a Pe"°:» °',;j;e«»^°^^'' ""'' ouestioued had they 
,ort to dep"« tbo^ ^^^^^^ ""^^^ ^st liberty-lov- 

that they would hav P^^^^^^^^ --^%^° to the fact 
stayed at ho-e.-- »;. ^^^^ ^est.mo'^ ._^^^.^^^y^ 

ing Engli*n^«=' of th ^j^.,„,ng the ^.^ ^^^ 

'^''- *^ TtThe -"><^ ''^ ^'^^". fofl r caLe. AU 

eights ; that^^e) ^^ ^^^ i-"«,trothers,- al^^e >" 

appeal to arms .n ^ ^^^e of br ^^ ^^^„„g 

tWs is now ^°"'^f ;^^,,ical development, ^^.^^_ ^„, 

features, form and phy ,^ speech, and o^e ^^^ ^^.^ 

again. ^°° 12 



that "broad Sanctuary," which each land offers for the 
exile, the alien, the refugee of all peoples, our disputes, 
if any arise, will be settled by arbitration, — alas! for a 
time defeated, delayed, but not for long, — each esteeming 
the other better than himself, each seeking the other's 
good, each acknowledging the other's greatness; and in 
the union for mutual protection and the world's better- 
ment, of the constitutional empire and monarchy and the 
constitutional republic, realizing as the welding together 
of a race of brothers goes on and on, "Time's noblest 
offspring and her last." 

Ah ! beloved, the recurrence to-day of the anniversary 
of the great republic's birth, — the synchronism of the 
memorial day and date of the discovery of the North 
American mainland four hundred years ago, and all this 
has meant to the English race throughout the world, 
with this year of glad remembrance of the passage of the 
sixty most eventful years of a woman's reign masterful, 
yet loving, over the masters of the earth, cannot fail to 
call to mind the Jubilee the world has just celebrated in 
honor of the gracious Queen and Empress, Victoria, the 
good, the great. In her sweet, innocent childhood, in 
her winsome girlhood, her gentle, loving maidenhood, in 
her womanly purity and perfectness, ever without re- 
proach ; in her wifely glory, making more fair, more 
honorable the holy estate ; in her maternal devotion, the 
worthy mother of reigning sovereigns and of those who 
shall yet wear crowns ; in her saintly widowhood, sorrow- 
ing, but not without the highest hopes and with the 
truest faith, for the loss of the great and good Prince 
Consort, who had lived not for himself, but for her, his 
true wife, and for her people as well ; — as Queen, as well 
as woman, as Empress over all hearts, has earth known 
one worthier of the title, Victoria, the good and great ? 
Her children rise up to call her blessed. Her subjects 
lay at her feet the assurance of their loyal, loving de- 
votion. The peoples of all the world 'do her willing rev- 
is 



erence and praise her abounding virtues, — her God-giving 
greatness. The earth is better for her holy living, her 
masterful rule. God grant to this queenly woman many 
years to come of her gentle reign over loyal hearts and 
loving subjects. God bless and save Victoria, the good 
and great. 

This year of glad remembrance, this epoch of anni- 
versary days and dates, combining to make an Amms 
mirabilis such as the world has rarely, if ever, seen be- 
fore, has still another great event to note, another cen- 
tenary to celebrate. The Bishops of the Angelican com- 
munion, English, Scotch, Irish, American, Colonial, Mis- 
sionary, Independent, meet this year to commemorate 
the bringing to Britain, and to the earlier British Church 
of this isle of saints, the western Christianity. Thirteen 
centuries have passed since S. Agustine landed on Brit- 
ain's shores, and now the summons come from him who 
sits in Augustine's chair, not indeed as as papa alteriiis or- 
bis, but as the recognized pf-hmis inter pares, the patri- 
arch, as it were, of a communion which, if the signs of 
the times can indicate the speeding future, is yet to be 
the meeting ground of long parted Christian men. We 
come at the invitation of him who is the representative 
of the long line of prelates who, throughout the world, 
find in Canterbury the common source of their apostoli- 
cal succession, reaching through the ages of the faith 
back to the Apostles and to Christ Himself. Our com- 
ing is to remember the days of old, to meditate on God's 
doings, to muse on the work of God's hands, to talk of 
holy things, to note the wondrous growth of the English 
Church and Christianity throughout the land possessed 
by the English-speaking peoples and in all the world 
and among all nations besides. We come together to 
tell of the multipication of the number of the baptised 
of all races and in every land, and to recall with glad and 
grateful remembrance the mighty and abundant works 
of loving beneficence which show forth everywhere the 



recognition by the Church — the Bride of Christ — of the 
Master's three-fold work, the caring for the body, the 
spirit, and the soul'. It is our glad privilege to find in 
this Lambeth Conference a fresh exemplification of the 
National Church Idea which has been too much lost 
sight of, and is, in fact, denied by the Church of Rome. 
As at the Jubilee the presence of Premiers, officials, and 
soldiers from all parts of the world marking the wondrous 
pageant, culminating in its reverent splendor before this 
sacred shrine, gave to men a new, a fuller realization of 
the greatness of the British Empire, so the coming to 
Lambeth for conference and council as to the matters 
pertaining to the Church of God, of Archbishops, Met- 
ropolitans and Bishops from England, from Scotland, 
from Ireland, from the United States, from the Domin- 
ion of Canada, from British North America, from India, 
from South Africa, from New Zealand, from Australia, 
from New South Wales, from the West Indies, from 
Guinea, from the Hawaiian Isles, from Hayti, from 
Equatorial Africa, from Sierra Leone, >om Liberia, 
from China, from Japan, from Zanzibar, from Corea, and 
other nationalities, will give the world the promise of 
the national Churches now or yet to be, more or less, 
autonomous, and all now and ever to be, in communion 
with the patriarchate of Canterbury. From all parts of 
the world these bishops come holding one common be- 
lief, asserting one primitive Catholicity, all of one line 
of apostolical succession, all recognizing the "one Lord, 
one faith, one baptism " of the Word of God. May the 
Great Shepherd and Bishop of Souls grant to us in our 
meeting under these inspiring circumstances, — at this 
auspicious time in this epochal year,— the right judg- 
ment to make our synod notable, a mighty factor in the 
spread and in the reunion of Christianity, and in the 
bringing of salvation to all men. 

Thus looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our 
faith, and ever mindful of His incarnation and atoning 

15 



death, asking the favoring protection of Almighty God, 
our Heavenly Father, seeking the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost, would we now and ever more recall the years of 
the right hand of the Most High? As we remember the 
days of old, as we meditate on God's doings, as we muse 
on the work of His hands, we would gratefully, gladly, 
and with deepest love and reverence remember that on 
this anniversary day, he is the freeman whom the truth 
of God makes free and that we should seek the liberty 
where with Christ doth make us free, so that in our lives 
and works and words "begun, continued, and ended" 
in our covenant, God, we may strive to live and labor 
and, if need be, die, pro ecclesia Dei — pro salute homi- 
num: for the Church of God; for the salvation of men, 
Amen. 



16 



LIBRARY 



CONGRESS 




